Teenage Santa Cruz ‘Maker’ inspires young engineers

Sixteen-year-old Sasha Jaffarove, right, watches over young students as they participate in the Santa Cruz Young Maker’s Club at the downtown Santa Cruz Library on Sunday. (Kevin Johnson -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

Sasha Jaffarove, 16, helps a student with his project during the Santa Cruz Young Maker’s Club at the downtown Santa Cruz Library on Sunday. (Kevin Johnson -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

SANTA CRUZ >> It’s Super Bowl Sunday and on the second floor of Santa Cruz’s downtown library, 16-year-old Sasha Jaffarove is coaching up two dozen kids with the passion and intensity of a professional athlete.

“In order to build something awesome, our energy needs to be way up here,” Sasha says as she paces around the tables. “Be unconstrained; be free; be creative. Construct whatever you want with these materials.”

On the tables before the elementary school-age kids are batteries, LED lights, rolls of tape, tongue depressors, sheets of construction paper, rolls of wax paper, alligator clips, crayons and paper cups. Emboldened by Sasha’s energy, the kids pounce on the materials.

Designed by Sasha and based off the popular “Maker Faire” model, Sunday’s event is the first part of a four-week pilot that runs through February. Maker Faire originated in 2006 in the San Francisco Bay Area as a project of the editors of Make: magazine. It has since grown into a worldwide network of events designed to inspire STEM creativity.

As Sasha, a student at Pacific Collegiate School, bounds around the room helping kids, her mother looks on. Puneh Jaffarove is both extremely proud and perhaps a bit mystified by the talents of her daughter.

“She started making robots out of recycled materials from the trash in the third grade” says her mother, Puneh Jaffarove. “Her grandfather said, ‘This is not normal what she’s doing. You need to cultivate this.’ ”

When Sasha’s teacher suggested Maker Faire, the 8-year-old girl flourished. During a caving trip to Arizona in the fourth grade she hit upon her first big idea.

“I saw all these little caves branching off and decided to design a robot that could explore and map them,” Sasha says.

She started with a protractor and LIDAR, a laser measuring device. By the ninth grade, Sasha’s Cave Mapper used computer tools like Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Stepper servos. She had also designed a system that sends data directly to a computer where points are graphed onto an axis. Today, it allows for the accurate plotting of caves. She is currently 3D printing her cave mapper’s base and exploring quadcopter options for aerial surveys.

The scientific community has taken notice. She was part of a group that sent a science experiment to the International Space Station. She entered the Santa Cruz County Science and Engineering Fair and won first place in the senior division, three special awards and a medal from the Office of Naval Research. She also was a runner-up in the Intel ISEF, arguably the world’s most prestigious science fair.

She has participated on panels at Intel and Pearson Learning. Last year she was featured on a panel at Pixar with Dale Dougherty, the founder of the Maker Faire and Make magazine. She has also won awards at Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Magazine.

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When the January 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine featured Sasha and her Cave Mapper, Santa Cruz virtual services librarian Diane Cowen reached out to the 16-year-old wunderkind and offered the downtown library as a space to conduct her Maker’s Ed pilot.

“We’d been looking for ways to get kids involved in STEM. We just provided the space and resources,” says youth services librarian Valerie Murphy. “Sasha brought all the ideas and energy.”

About the Author

Ryan Masters has more than a decade of experience reporting on both sides of the Monterey Bay. His primary beats at the Santa Cruz Sentinel include crime, higher education, the Santa Cruz Mountains, South County and the North Coast.
Reach the author at rmasters@santacruzsentinel.com
or follow Ryan on Twitter: @RyanMasters831.